brothers. >> narrator: obama came to rsuade the big bankers to join a push for reform. >> immediate action to reform financial regulation... >> we've seen bail-outs, stress tests, an alphabet soup of treasury and fed programs... >> he decides to have a meeting that's literally steps from wall street, right? i mean, federal hall is... you can walk down to the exchange floors. >> narrator: washington's power brokers were there, congressional leaders, his economic team... >> the president of the united states. >> narrator: but the titans of wall street didn't show up. >> essentially, none of the big figures from wall street show up to hear the speech. they all just stay in their offices and do their work. >> they don't even show up to the speech. it wasn't like the speech was scheduled, you know, without notice. they just had better things to do that day. >> narrator: earlier the president had taken the cautious course; none of the bank ceos had been fired. >> if you go have a speech on wall street and people from wall street don't even show up for your speech, and you're the president